


The Ghost Of Christmas Past

by yvette_cigarette



Category: Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Angst, Dream Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Infidelity, Insomnia, M/M, Mentions of Louisa, Milex Big Bang, Reminiscence, Smoking, Wet Dream, i wanna say angst with happy ending..., kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:41:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21812308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yvette_cigarette/pseuds/yvette_cigarette
Summary: The moment it registered, Alex’ eyes shot open and his attention snapped to the bathroom door.And there he was, phantom in the flesh, leaned up against the doorframe like any teenager’s wet dream.
Relationships: Miles Kane/Alex Turner
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40
Collections: Milex Big Bang 2019





	The Ghost Of Christmas Past

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo this is my fic for the Milex Big Bang, I wasn’t sure whether I’d use this because it ain’t sunshine and roses 🙈but here we are ! 
> 
> I do mention Louisa briefly, I tried to be as respectful to everyone as I could, while at the same time...have her bf dream about Miles Kane hand jobs? 
> 
> Title doesn’t make much sense other than the fact that it’s almost Christmas, oh well. 
> 
> Heed the warnings, Alex isn’t too cheery here! xx

It was in a hotel between places in his life. His mind felt neither here nor there. 

The sound of the door closing behind Louisa seemed faint, hardly registered, followed by the sensation of his lips licking off the taste of her. 

His ears felt blocked, muffled by the thoughts crammed tight inside Alex’ hungover skull, each one trying desperately to take shape. He blinked firmly, as if enough pressure could flatten his headache, eyes flicking sluggishly away from the door frame. 

Patting down his navy polo shirt which felt more like his skin than his skin, Alex sucked in a faulty breath of air, digging around the pockets of his slacks, front to back. 

Coming up short after a century of seconds, the craving lad spent an unending spell fidgeting through the ritzy, compact hotel room in hasty search for his half-empty pack of cigarettes, an itchy discomfort settling under his skin.

In his search, Alex’ breath sharpened and he wondered why he didn’t just run out to the nearest corner store - it’d certainly get him out of this blotchy, perfume bottle of a room.

When the lad does finally locate his smokes - they’re tucked under a small book atop Louisa’s nightstand, no doubt a cheap stab at getting Alex to quit - he lights up, eyes absently trekking over the snakes of jewelry littering the expanse; the earrings and unopened bottle of Coco Chanel, the stars of diamonds he’d bought in pursuit of mending them at one point or another. 

If this was truly how redemption worked, Alex felt he owed Miles a fountain of pearl, a palace of solid sodding gold, The Louvre,  'La Tour Eiffel ,  anything and everything. Rip the moon down from the sky, cut the power in the sun - and what would it matter when Miles was the sun anyway?

Coming back into his skeleton, Alex hummed lowly around the acrid taste invading his mouth - the blurred oath to every cigarette he’d sucked on since he was sixteen - his shoulders sagging easily, a thick cloud of his tension erasing as he tucked the carton and lighter deep in a trouser pocket.

Alex shut his eyes as he pulled in a breath of nicotine-free air, absently casting about the root of this sudden nervous surge - hadn’t he just been kissing his girlfriend goodbye? Wishing her a nice night with her friends, and in a guilty way,  _ waiting _ to be alone? 

He found himself waiting for that a lot lately.

The next grey exhale was through unconsciously clenched teeth. Alex scrubbed his nails down his cleanly shaven neck and looked around the opulent room, as if waiting for another unknown, panicked thought to come for him. He spooked himself far too often these days. 

Perching the cigarette between his dry, cracked lips, Alex drew his hands up and down his face, a useless bid to rub away the dark bags under his eyes. It was useless, he could pack a plane with his baggage, emotional and otherwise.

Sighing out another lungful of ash, the lad pulls a lazy sundry of garments from his suitcase, recruiting the items easiest to find.

Balling the clothes he’d attempt to asleep in under his arm, Alex retrieved a previously polluted ashtray from the window sill, passing the main foyer to enter the tight little bathroom. 

For the first time in a while, Alex was grateful for the petite fit of his surroundings; nothing in this impersonal hotel hugged him very tightly. Louisa excluded. 

Pulling the door closed behind him, Alex placed his clothes and ashtray over the elderly chiffonier, the mahogany scowling up at him for having carelessly rest the grubby item over its polished surface. 

Alex held the smoke between his fingers, working the bath taps into action before plugging up the drain, the steady flow of hot and cold water neutrally hitting in the tub.

After adding an offhand dose of bubble-bath to the filling basin - taking notice to avoid it brimming over - Alex moved to sit above the closed toilet seat, resting his elbows on his thighs. 

He brought the deflating cigarette to his chapped lips, his lids flitting shut with the sound of the running water.

For Alex, closing his eyes had always offered a certain delay, a beat to unbend his nerves, to still his mind and settle the world. Now memories of such a luxury sent a shiver of nostalgia up his spine - that what now filled him with these cruel reels, had once brought such remedy.

Stray memories sketch behind Alex’ eyelids the moment their granted access. 

_ An explicit pair of flecked, hazel eyes, a perfect beam of crooked teeth, heart beats for hands.  _

Alex groaned in rejection of the slideshow. Perhaps - the sentimental bastard in him voiced - it was simply the habit of his rescuing mind to piece together articles of Miles - almost habitually. As if some unmerited happy-place. 

Alex pushes himself from that cliff of thought, abandoning the desire to unpick his own arguments. Glancing up, he finds he’d meditated on those directionless points longer than it’d felt like - the bathtub two thirds full, more than enough hot water to thaw out his frozen state.

Following the snubbing out of his failing cigarette, Alex peels himself from his clingy clothes, sighing tiredly as he stepped into the soapy, fruity scented bath.

The lad feels the clench to his muscles unfasten, exhaled the moment the hot water swallows his body, the knots tied into the threads of his flesh are loosened, the ones in his mind however, remain disobediently taut. 

Bending his knees as he does, Alex slanted his ribs over the tub’s lip, leaning down to retrieve his discarded cigarette and lighter from the pocket of his fallen slacks; wilted from him like death to the pearly tiled floor. 

Settling waist-down, cozily under the balmy, heated liquid, Alex brackets his elbows either side of the tub’s edge, flicking the flame of his lighter awake, the spark kissing the end of his cig before setting the item aside - to the poor chiffonier.

Exhaling a smoky fog to mingle with the light steam rising from the bathwater, Alex let his eyes flutter shut, bringing the cigarette to his coarse lips, the misty, adhesive vapor in the air sticking to his exposed skin.

The weight of his thoughts halo Alex’ temples, and the climate to his body shifts; his jaded, drowsy frame draining of its anxious intent, a bank of missed hours swimming to the surface. 

Alex’ latest collection of sleepless nights was beginning to border his entire disposition. 

It was exhausting. The unaccounted nights were now boldly catching up with him - the time zone three-sixties, the amount of transatlantic flights spinning his head, the sex or lack of it, the drinks which never ended entirely. Really, he could take his pick.

The thin fractions of sleep he did obtain were all but the bare minimum to keep from going completely mad. Or perhaps, he mused, he’d long since passed such a point. He thoughtlessly dropped it; such a suspicion would require too much brain-power to investigate. 

In Alex’ awareness, there was a shallow committee of possible culprits; notions as to why sleep defied him. As in heavy drinking or the very lung-wilting item he currently smoked like a lifeline. 

Stress was next on the short string of speculation; Alex’ mind was stuffed with trepidation for the sprouting album - although it wasn’t as if the odds were against Turner and his bandmates, it just seemed the nature of his thoughts to darken in the face of uncertainty. The star had consented from the start of his double life to such doubts, branding them as simply par for course - a finely printed detail in the ever-enthralling plot.

The cigarette burning between his fingers had shrivelled, recoiled almost to his knuckles. 

Alex sighed, reaching across the brink to squeeze the smoke dead against the ashtray, then sinking back under the parching, soapy water. 

The result of Alex’ movements had the heated liquid lapping up the curve of the tub, his body immersed in bubbles to his chin as he released a tense breath, eyes slipping shut once more.

Allowing his concern to orbit solely around the wanting heat of the water, Alex paired the sensation with the pulse in his ears - his lobes just gracing the water’s surface - and the cold rim of the tub under his arms where they were splayed around the edge. 

Sighing rather vacantly, Alex’ throat caught his breath on its way out, pulling a wounded whimper from his chest.

To tamp down the pathetic sound, the lad squeezed his eyes tight and hummed a low melody that’d been trapped in his mind since breakfast; periodically silenced by the bustle of conversation. The persistent tune had resurfaced any chance it got. 

As Alex languidly hummed through his closed lips - his current acidity glad of the diversion - he found his melodious, albeit somber tune to be the sole sound filling the dainty bathroom, safe for the rustling traffic below. 

In no time at all, Alex found himself on the cusp of his fatigue, his exhaustion a wink from digesting him, eyelids heavy and breathing steady - when suddenly he heard him: the unmistakable Scouse purr which was forever carved into his gooey mind, turning the miserable sound of Alex’ humming beautiful. 

The moment it registered, Alex’ eyes shot open and his attention snapped to the bathroom door.

And there he was, phantom in the flesh, leaned up against the doorframe like any teenager’s wetdream. Leather sleeved arms crossed over his chest, his ginger-ale irises trained on Alex. 

“Evening, laa.” He greeted smoothly, lips curving into a sly, ornamenting smirk, “long time no see, eh?” His tone was teasing, playful in a way that forced Alex’ piece-of-shit-heart to flutter in reminiscence. 

The expansion of his devouring pupils was all the reaction Alex’ comatose body could muster. His mind was thick, syrupy as he blinked through the suddenly stocky air, past the density of his own foggy head to fix his widened gaze on the Scouser. 

Alex’ entire reality was lagging; a drunk, doped frame by frame as his eyes climbed Miles’ composition. His buckle-ankle boots, those inky, taut jeans, upscaling to the cotton tank tucked behind his melanoid-black jacket. An ensemble fit for any misanthrope’s horny fantasy. 

“Miles?” was all his addled brain finally seemed able to impart, his breath catching when Miles smiled gently to his utterance, his head tilting slightly.

Alex, clad solely in the soapy, slick bathwater, could only lay wittless where he was, his unfocused eyes finding Miles’ - an instinct he could almost call loyal. 

The tinge hidden in those orbs was vivid, rich - far from the unlit shade he’d last found there - and were bonded hoodedly to Alex. It was disarming. It was exactly the way he felt he needed to be looked at.

He swallowed tightly, and it felt like glass, his throat having dried up completely; his eyes seeming to have stolen that moisture as they clouded pathetically. 

He blinks the things he can’t control into the back of his skull, safely filed away for when...never. _ Whenever _ he could cry and understand with complete certainty what it meant.

Before Alex was able to exhort his sluggish mind into rolling a real sentence across his lips, Miles abandoned his saltry post with a low chuckle - alerting Alex to his scandalously gaping mouth. He closed it slowly, undividedly studying Miles as the fantasy took a couple of sure steps in Alex’ unsure direction. 

His pulse barked abusively through his bones, his hands curled, knuckles pale around the tub’s brink. Worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, Alex’ heart hiccuped when Miles paused his trajectory to retrieve the earlier discarded carton of cigarettes, and dingy lighter from the chiffonier. 

He supposed some things never changed, and would always translate properly.

Alex stared mutely as Miles plucked a cig, stuck it between his thin, entrancing lips and lit the end. Exhaling a plume of silver similar to Alex’ prior ones, the lad’s eyes dropped shut before unhurriedly lifting to gaze thoughtfully at Alex. 

“You don’t mind, yeah?” Miles smiled, his tone an eased statement as he vaguely gestured to the stolen cigarette. It wasn’t really a question, because it didn’t really need to be.

Before Alex’ floating mind knew it, Miles’ fluent, lithe figure had closed the distance between them, and was looming above him, his gray shadow contrasting against the yellowish light overhead. 

He blinked soberly up at the towering lad, the steamy vapor outlining Miles’ frame, smudging his sharp edges into a drunk, glazed vision that made Alex’ lips curl up in a dumb smile. 

The sentiment of old friends and something far from it is exchanged, Alex’ heart tugging as Miles lowered himself, an admiring expression worn as he knelt by the occupied tub, settling himself there as if it were the most natural thing on earth. Alex realised it kind of was. 

The boy pulled his arms to his chest as Miles’ leather graced ones crossed over the bath’s edge, cigarette burning between his digits as the lad’s soft eyes studied Alex’ expression, the analysis for now venturing no lower. 

He blew the next drag sideways before fixing Alex with a sideways, roguish smirk, inhaling tobacco-lessly, “not that I don’t love these guessing games of ours...but, how’ve you been, love?” When he extended a hand to comb through the front of Alex’ unwashed hair, all the boy could do was lean into it, eyes flitting shut as pleasure filled the negative of his eyelids. 

“I...” Alex frowned, wrinkling his eyes shut for fear of what they’d do to betray him, swallowing firmly, “I’ve been...okay.” He despised his betraying tone, his averted eyes only adding to the skewed response, “I’ve been okay.” He whispered back to himself. 

Miles was nodding passively, resistlessly when Alex dare unclench his eyelids, faintly noting the other’s collected state; juxtaposed beside Alex’ severely exposed posture, his hazel eyes rolling over every tick of movement Alex made, his regard truer than anything the man could hope to lyricise. 

“I’m glad to hear it.” The lad hummed, his response delivered with no traceable indulgence between syllables, only a verification which had Alex wishing Miles  _ didn’t  _ believe in this happiness,  _ demanded _ Alex cut his thoughts free and bleed his confused version of honesty. 

Tapping the wilted end of his cigarette, the ash melting into the bathwater, Miles’ facade - if it was one - faltered briefly. 

“Y’know, I...I weren’t sure if you’d want to see me.” 

Miles’ dazzling eyes narrow, as if giving Alex an in or an out - an olive branch or one end of a blanket to cover themselves with. 

“Miles,” Alex breathes, his tone containing only a fraction of the disbelief inside him, “of  _ course _ I…” flicking his eyes downwards, the boy absently frowns down to the bitten heads of Miles’ perfect fingers, observing where they’re curled around the tub’s rim, “did you  _ bite _ your nails?” He butts into his own sentence, deeming this epiphany of greater relevance. 

Following Alex’ line of sight quizzically, Miles blinked down to the digits in question,  _ “oh…” _ he huffed lightly, a smile crawling across his lips. “Yeah...weird, hey? Haven’t bitten ‘em since…” he backtracked, “since  _ you  _ were there, pulling me fingers out me mouf.” He chuckled warmly, the sound doing something unfair to Alex’ soul. 

With the bathroom falling mute once more, the sound of  _ unspoken _ cracked through the tiles like thunder, deafeningly loud as Alex considered possible words.

His efforts are gagged the moment he finds Miles’ eyes dipping to shamelessly admire Alex’ lower regions, notifying the boy of his current exhibition; a good deal of the bath bubbles having melted away, subsequently illustrating his stark nudity. 

Closing his legs on petty, self-reproaching grounds, Alex felt the heat on his cheeks rise - the temperature to the bath turning arctic, fucking polar as Miles’ lips curled foxily, his dimples coming out to flirt.

“I quit these, you know.” Miles murmured conversationally, referencing the cigarette sagging between his fingers before pushing the end against the bath lip, “obviously didn’t stick.” He mused, elbowing the shriveled item onto the floor. “I’ve come to find,” he proposed smilingly, “it’s near impossible to quit some things.” 

“We shouldn’t... have to.” Alex hears himself say, his voice oddly distorted in his ears, “I mean...who’s to say what’s good for us?” Having believed his conviction had retired long ago, Alex was left in the dark, wondering where the need to prove his own resistance had suddenly come from. 

Miles huffed, smirking with a pointed look he aimed lazyly at Alex. “You seemed to have a pretty good idea, last time we spoke.” 

The soap-attired one’s eyes quickly abandoned their mission through the other’s, the tops of his protruding kneecaps winning his attention over, his guilt resuming it’s tight spiral through Alex’ mind - a fun kind of self-inflicted cyclone. 

Alex thoughtlessly lifted his hands to hover under his eyes, finding soft, pruned lines mapping his palm. His mind felt so sickly fogged, his thoughts as cloudy as the bathroom had become.

“Miles, I-” perhaps it was better that he was cut off when he was, perhaps he would’ve lost steam halfway down the track, finding his feelings to be rather useless when delivered with the absence of conviction.

The event that does sweep Alex’ impulsion away is barely there at all, a touch too light to count, a hand unfurled from a hesitant, balled fist to an open, slender fingered caress. A floating touch, a feather-light brush along the soapy bathwater nearest to Alex, dancing softly over the gooseflesh of the man’s drowned thigh. 

His breath caught at the sight of Miles’ doused hand, quite the sight where it had disappeared under the water, the slick liquid swallowing him to the wrist, the sleeve of his jacket just gracing the water’s surface. 

Alex’ eyes fell shut, pulling down a breath he prayed would last into his junked body, his own hands tensing into nervous balls where they rest - pruned, submerged and useless by his side. 

A saving, cushioned feeling spread like a glistening, stunning ink over Alex’ tired, untouched skin. His flesh feeling perfectly fitted, every organ tucked safe inside, every breath a gift rather than an expectation. 

The fingers that aren’t curled like a weight over Alex’ electrified thigh extend above his ditch, turning the bath’s taps awake, a thick heat rippling through Alex as the facets begin weeping. 

Once more outpacing the bath’s temperature, Alex’ cheeks burn as he bites his nether lip, dopey, wanting eyes locking on Miles’. 

“...missed touching ye, love.” The Scouser uttered ardently, the motion of his hand travelling upwards emphasising this claim, the peaks of Miles’ fingers kissing the juncture between Alex’ thigh and hip. “Missed feeling you. You’re me favourite feeling in the world.”

Peering down to the scene unfurling, Alex takes in the tarrying field of bubbles, cloaking his modesty once more, not that it much mattered, what with Miles’ roving hand’s current course.

“You’re tremblin’, Al.” Miles’ accent goes through one ear and out the other, Alex’ throat bobbing around a firm swallow, stomach in his chest, his thoughts - the ones he can account for - are airborne, every unsmart detail of his treasure chest mind pulled from the abstract.

“Don’t worry about me.” He either thinks or says.

His eyes ineptly note the rapidly filling tub, the broth’s volume climbing the tub’s curves just as Miles’ hand ascends Alex’ thigh. 

“My joy is to have you to worry about.”

Before Alex can begin to dissect his meaning, Miles’ fingers are curling around him. Sucking down a sharp breath, his nails bite into his pruned, lax palms as his eyes squint. 

“Stunning…” Miles murmured under his breath, shaking his head as if in disbelief, the grip on Alex’ length seeming so solidly real now, Miles’ palm filling, growing occupied by the weight of Alex’ hardening cock, blood rushing to accommodate the sudden attention. 

Miles licks his lips, the bathwater climbing his leather sleeve, taps rushing almost to a violent degree. “You gonna let me have you?” He asks lightly, “let me have you for the moment?” 

Alex doesn’t follow the movement of Miles’ mouth, isn’t even certain his lips had shifted at all, it’s only the giving colour curled around Miles’ pupils that hint Alex in on any of this madness.

His jammed head nods deftly, eyes peering out through the smoggy, hot air, his demeanor much too meek for a sober Alex to ever approve of, though this present version seems too pleasantly numb to mind.

“Please…” he all but whispers into the breathy air between them, the warmth between his hips seeming to reciprocate the hold Miles has on it, claiming the lad’s hand the way Miles does Alex. 

The sound of the facet’s wailing just about swallows Alex’ words, “please don’t stop touching me.” He once more resents the transparency to the words he offers up - the discernible need there he wishes to god he knew how to better hide.

The howl of water, and perfect heat engulfing Alex seem to illuminate his once discoloured points; his veins intoning in a healthy new shade, his skin velvety as his fingertips brush along his chest, dragging over the sweaty, liquid beaded flesh. 

His entire body suddenly so willing to be touched.

The bolt of pleasure from Miles’ first stroke is what rips Alex from his rumination, a tight heat pooling behind his navel as his toes curl, his concrete head reclining against the tub’s brink. 

“Fuck...” he cursed under his ragged breath, his chin lifting in answer to the steadily lifting water, bubbles hovering just by his jaw now - when had that happened? - Miles’ jacket sleeve long digested by the aromatic concoction.

Miles’ hand soon finds its rhythm, a fluid motion that has Alex panting embarrassingly fast, his breath uneven as his hips jerk softly along with the pumping hold on him, wispy little sounds slipping out traitorously. 

One unwise movement on Alex’ part has the tail end of the bath spilling over. The overflowing sensation has Alex shuffling his body upwards, one arm instinctively circling Miles’ shoulders, latterly allowing Alex to keep well above the water, breathing into Miles’ collarbone unevenly. 

Soon the sound of water slapping over the bathroom tiles hit’s Alex’ awareness, but he’s too far gone, too engrossed in the chase for his completion to care about the rest of the planet’s happenings. 

He clutches the collar of Miles’ jacket with one weak, jelly-boned hand, the other braced over the opposite side of the tub, allowing the sensation of Miles’ perfect hand to be his sole focus. 

The calloused, elegant device syphons every ounce of doubt from him, curling on the upstroke, squeezing Alex hard enough to have him on the brink of drooling. All the while Miles’ free arm is curled around Alex, holding him up, above water and chaos in a way he always had. 

When the lad does reach his shuddering high, the water pulsing around him like a single, merciless heart beat tuned into his own - every dirty, guilty corner washed clean - he feels utterly baptized, scrubbed free of his mental calluses, even if just for now. 

Alex moans through his orgasim into the cove of Miles’ neck, his stream of cloudy cum invisible in the sea of bubbles and soap which leak, soaking the bathroom mat under Miles’ knees. 

Alex’ head winds sluggishly, his breathing punching through him, a sobering inhale coming when Alex does, somehow, for a brief moment find himself. 

He blinks up at Miles sedately, and then his sight trails around them, to the scene of bubble bath anarchy; the overflowing water, the inauthentically sweet stench to the air, the unrealistic pleasure simply from breathing. 

It isn’t real. 

Of course it isn’t.

His heart drops, though Alex suspects the organ had known all along, simply allowing to Alex play out his little fantasy.

“It’s a dream…” Alex utters monotone, turning to Miles with glassy eyes. “Isn’t it?” 

The water doesn’t once halt in it’s repetitive journey; falling from the tap, into the tub and eventually over the edge.  _ He _ feels over the edge, far gone as Miles smiles sadly at Alex, the arm curled around the boy’s body tightening, pulling him as close as he can achieve. 

Miles kisses the boy’s sweaty, pink left cheek, his right, his brow and finally his parted lips. 

The touch is heaven and hell, it’s another tell, as is the colour of resolve in Miles’ eyes when they part.

“For now.” Is all he returns to Alex’ question, nuzzling into the crook of the boy’s neck, excepting Alex when he shuffled his drained body in for a hug. A hug was the least this fantasy could fucking offer.

Dizzying as it was, the sensation of holding Miles was like holding himself, or something far more stable, something more than the memory. 

Alex knew that before long the moment would slip between his fingers, so he squeezed his eyes shut in hopes of pausing, freezing this state of tranquility, only to find the result being of the opposite effect. 

When Alex blinked his eyes into focus, he was gazing up at the ceiling. 

His eyes traced the timber beams, the dusty grey paint, all he could see bounced sharply into clarity, and his breath hitched. 

Sitting up in the logically filled bathtub, the air clear and water ice cold, Alex’ chest stuttered as he gazed about the impossibly empty bathroom, his body limp and pruned. 

He stares down at his distant hands, studying them closely, as if for traces of Miles. 

Alex finds nothing between the wiry lines of his palms but the evidence of his diverging fantasy. Only a dream, the conclusion swallows him. Only a dream. 

_ For now. _

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr : yvettecigarette bc I need some prompts Lmaoo


End file.
